A Nightmare from Friday to Halloween - Halloween II (2009)

The three most prominent American horror franchises (Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street) have influenced American cinema even beyond the horror genre. As of 2021, there are exactly 31 movies across all three franchises, and I am going to attempt to watch all of them, for this Halloween, one per day.

I really dig Rob Zombie’s version of Halloween and its sequel. I had heard bad things about this particular sequel, how it was basically incomprehensible and unsatisfying. But I managed to watch the director’s cut of this film, and I think those problems have mostly gone away. Apparently, a lot of the cuts were to Laurie’s half of the story, which actually sees her becoming more unstable as a result of her grief and PTSD. Scout Taylor-Compton really works overtime in her role to show the trauma her character has been through, and her performance ties strongly into the theme of nature vs. nurture that lies at the center of this duo of films. I think much of the reason that I don’t particularly like a lot of the sequels I have seen for Halloween so far is that it just makes Michael Myers the monster of the week and we don’t really see the effects his deeds have on ordinary people despite a lot of blood and gore. For some people, it might seem fine, but for me, this is a surefire formula for repetition and trite material, which seems to be the case for most of these sequels. It’s too bad Zombie had to see his film butchered because I really think he told this particular story well and that he humanized fringe characters acting at their worse, but for very understandable reasons.